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Hillary Clinton: ‘I am more optimistic today’

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said goodbye to the nation’s diplomatic corps and aid workers on her last day on the job, and said she was more upbeat about the fate of the world than she had been at the start of her tenure.

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“I know that the world we are trying to help bring into being in the 21st century will have many difficult days,” Clinton said Friday, speaking to a packed State Department lobby. “But I am more optimistic today than I was when I stood here four years ago because I have seen day after day the many contributions that our diplomats and development experts are making to help ensure that this century provides the kind of peace, progress and prosperity, that not just the United States but the entire world, especially young people, so richly deserve.”

She added later that she would miss her coworkers, joking “I will probably be dialing ops just to talk.”

“I cannot fully express how grateful I am to those with whom I have spent many hours here in Washington, around the world, and in airplanes,” the nation’s 67th Secretary of State said. “But I’m proud of the work we have done to elevate diplomacy and development, to serve the nation we all love.”

The former first lady and presidential candidate also addressed the suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. A Turkish security guard died in the attack.

“Of course, we live in very complex and even dangerous times as we saw again just today at our embassy in Ankara, where we were attacked and lost one of our foreign service nationals and others injured,” Clinton said. “But I spoke with the Ambassador and the team there. I spoke with my Turkish counterpart, and I told them how much we valued their commitment and their sacrifice.”